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Assessment of Global Positioning System Utilization in Emergency Medical Services

One of the reasons mortality is higher for rural vehicular trauma victims than for urban victims is the longer time required to get a rural trauma victim into a definitive care facility. Use of Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation has been shown to reduce this time, but use of this technology by Emergency Medical Service (EMS) agencies is not universally employed. While the greatest emphasis of utilizing GPS technology in the EMS environment should be placed on improving patient outcomes by reducing total pre hospital time, additional benefits for EMS agencies may be seen in the form of reduced expenditures from improved routing of ambulances . The purpose of the study is to assess the economic impact on EMS agencies through implementing GPS technology. EMS agencies may see a return on their capital investments in GPS systems from reductions of mileage, maintenance, and fuel expenditures.